A Love Story
by talking-eye
Summary: My new writing experiment. Burke and Cristina. Chapter 8 is up.
1. Chapter 1

**I want to try out this idea but it didn't turn out too well. Regardless, I will write it out. Let's call it my writing experiment. Reviews are welcome to help me come up with a better storyline.**

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This is obvious, but let me emphasize that I'm trying to write a love story, one that I've learned by heart over the years; one so dear and near to me like my own skin.

I am by no means an eloquent writer—as surgeons, our only training in writing is scribbling on medical charts. So why am I writing at all? That's because it's an important part of my personal history that I don't want to see buried. I want it to be past down generation after generation…

Sorry. My darling twins were crying just now. You see, it isn't easy to be a mom, and two at the same time? Now this really is a challenge. Now I completely understand why Mom and Dad did not give me any siblings to play with. Don't get me wrong. I love my babies. They remind me of their grandparents.

Sometimes my eyes would burn a little, wishing Criston and Prestina had a chance to meet their grandpa and grandma. I'm not sure if they would love my mom's jargon-filled lullabies as much as I did, but I wouldn't have doubted for a second that it was good influence—how could you prove otherwise when I, daughter of Cristina Yang and Preston Burke, was given the Early Career Award two years after I completed my residency at Seattle Grace?

In case you're wondering where my husband is-- No, he's not a surgeon. No, he's not in the medical profession. Given my family background, you'd be surprised but my parents actually forbade me to date anyone at the hospital—"too intense for your own good"—as my mom put it jokingly.

Oops. I'm digressing again. My Mr. Handsome has just got home. No, I'm serious, my husband is handsome, maybe not as good-looking as my dad in his prime, but he's an esteemed hair stylist for movie stars.

How long should one chapter be? I don't feel confident with my writing. Joshua is running through it now. I hope he won't tell me to give this up. After all, I think I have very beautiful handwriting, and would kill to tell the world how proud I am as my parents' daughter.


	2. Chapter 2

Ch. 2

Most people who knew my parents assumed it all started on the day Nurse Fallon died. None of them, not even her best friend Mer, realized that Liz Fallon's case was the thing that _finally_ brought together the two who were meant to be one.

To understand their love story, one really had to know what sort of people my parents were— ambitious, arrogant, and alone. The thrill of challenge never wore them down.

How then, did they come to notice each other before Nurse Fallon? Was it coffee? No, that came later. Remember the first day of their internship? Dad picked George over Mom to scrub in. He said Mom caught his attention because he had never seen an intern who was so bad at hiding her feeling of disgust in front of her superior. To him, that was a challenge, one that stirred in him an eerie sensation.

What about Mom? Surely she wasn't too pleased with Dad? Well, not really. Cristina Yang had done her homework. She knew Preston Burke was trouble and she loved that instinctively. After all, she chose to be a surgeon because she wanted to fix things. If there's no trouble in this world, there'd be nothing to fix. Besides, there was something unmistakably familiar about this man—cocky yet self-conscious.

What it really boils down to is that as human beings, we all want company, but that's not easy when you're so smart that people find you unapproachable. Mom entered Dad's life at the right moment, when Dr. Webber brought Dr. Sheppard into the race. Dad was reluctant to admit it but he was a little insecure then. Plus, he had no friend. He knew the confidence behind Mom's fiery eyes was exactly what he could use.


	3. Chapter 3

Ch. 3

Since most people know about Nurse Fallon and the famous coffee encounter, I will back up a little.

At the age of 34, my dad was still single. Work was the one thing that would bring a smile to his face, not woman. Mom used to tease him for not having dated anyone since his graduation dance in medical school. (Given his good looks, I'm skeptical, but I'll have my mother's word for it)

Mom was a youngerversion of Dad. She acted as if she were at the top of the world. Did she really _feel_ that way all the time? I doubt it. I guess it's because of her Beverley Hills childhood—something she tried very hard to get away from. _Knowledge transcends beauty_, _for knowledge itself is beautiful,_ that's what she used to say.

I think my mother's a beautiful woman. I'm sure Dad would agree, as did most of her suitors. OK, don't rub your eyes. You're right, I did say _suitors._ Not just one, but a lot. The only time I liked Grandma Helen was when she offered me this information. Mom always came home complaining to the cleaning lady about every single dumb guy who tried to date her. For the record, she once asked why it was dinosaurs, not men, which became extinct.

The problem? They were too George-like. Arrogant guys never bothered going out with my mother and she hated them for competing with her at school. Sadly, deep in her bones, Cristina Yang was a very traditional girl. She wanted a man who could tame her but she couldn't bear to lose her unbeatable image. She wanted to appear independent and be treated as an equal to men.

Do you seriously believe Mom wanted to open the car door for herself on their first formal date? Trust me, most women don't. It makes me chuckle when Dad told me Mom's "_very polite_ response" freaked him out. My mother might not be good at hiding her anger, but she's an expert in hiding her feelings with serious and impersonal remarks when she was impressed or in love.

In essence, Mom wanted to be a follower, but there was no one to follow. Gentle yet cocky, Dad was like sweet and sour pork to her—yummy and different.


	4. Chapter 4

Ch. 4 The wedding

Where was I last time? Was it Nurse Fallon or the coffee? That was the highlight of my parents' budding relationship and those few months that followed were a lot more like what you would see on TV. I could assure you those are juicy stories to tell, but they're too dramatic to be good for one's heart. Instead, I will fast forward to their wedding—or the absence of it.

People lost hope in marriage even back in my parents' hay days. Not my dad. In fact, he was so eager to wed my mom after two years into their relationship that she almost broke up with him. Anyone who knew how strong-willed and work-oriented Cristina Yang was would not have committed that mistake when she was fighting hard to become chief resident.

The second time he proposed to her, he thought he was capitalizing on the right moment—when Mom's patients, a loving old couple, died 10 minutes apart, side by side in the hospital room. Poor Dad. He wasn't aware that Mom couldn't quite draw the connection between love and death the same way he did. After that, Preston Burke was a defeated man and he decided not to ask again.

How, then, did they end up getting married? It was unplanned, unrehearsed, totally on impulse. The only person to blame, of course, was me.

Mom knew it wasn't food poisoning when she began throwing up uncontrollably. She didn't want Dad to make a fuss of it, however. In principle, she wanted to take control before Dad's excitement turned him into another Nazi. She knew what he could be up to, selling her motorcycle, hiding her vodka, replacing her wardrobe with fat pregnant girls' dress, canceling her surgeries, and stopping her from meeting her friends at Joe's, wrecking her life.

So, that very evening, Mom threw her husband-to-be a 3-page contract.

"_Both of us are off this Saturday, so we're getting married—If you agree to all the conditions."_

Obviously, the first thing she made very clear was that she did not want a wedding, or wedding gown, or her mother.

They always told me they had a great time that weekend, but nobody really knew how it was, except that they were pronounced husband and wife, for the first and only time.


	5. Chapter 5

Ch.5 My name

Not to be egocentric, but I reckon I never properly introduced myself to you. I am Asha E. Burke, the only daughter of Preston Burke and Cristina Yang. E for Eugene, as in Eugene Foote, my dad's favorite musician. That is pretty clear.

Coming up with my first name was a much bigger hassle. Mom wanted something that begins with an A because that's the only thing that had ever appeared on her academic reports. Dad was okay with that, until he found out how many different names there were that began with an A.

I was born on Christmas Eve. My mom's step-dad had long passed away and she was celebrating Christmas with Dad—yes, Cristina Yang decorating the Christmas tree and wrapping boxes of chocolate in silver and gold, dancing to _Hark the Harold Angels Sing—_when her water broke.

That almost made me an Angel, or Angela. Thank God it didn't happen.

Dad thought of naming me after his grandma Alice, but Mom thought it sounded too much like Ellis with a capital G (not that she didn't respect her as one of the greatest surgeons of their era).

Surely it could not be Adele, Addison or Alexandra (Alex the Evil Spawn for short). Anna, along with its variations Ann, Anne, and Annie, was out of the question, for it was the only girl my dad had seriously dated.

Amy was too simple, Anastacia too Russian. Aggie too boyish, Ariel too Disney, Annabelle sounds too much like a model, too Izzie. They also decided against Abigail, Ada, Amelia, Anita, Avis and a dozen other names for reasons unknown. At one point, people at the hospital thought they would call me aorta, aneurism, or accident.

Finally, they went to get my birth certificate. The officer, who, according to Dad, resembled Bailey the Nazi, was annoyed that my parents only put the letter _A_ down as my first name. She lectured my parents for 5 whole minutes about how I would be ridiculed by other kids at school.

I was named after that officer. In Kiswahili, Asha means life. It's only years later that I realize Asha also means hope in Hindu.

My parents gave me life, and I am here to bring life and hope to more.


	6. Chapter 6

Ch. 6 The ring

Joshua came home with such a mortified look on his face that I thought someone died. But he works at the hair saloon, not a hospital, so I thought it wouldn't be that bad—not until he told me he lost his wedding band.

I admit I was upset, I still do. But when I thought about what happened to my parents many years ago, I gave him a big hug and forgave him.

The trouble of being a surgeon (and a hair stylist) is that you often need to take your ring off. My dad, as some of you already realized, was a careful man. My mom, on the other hand, never quite fully caught up with him in this regard.

It was a very plain wedding ring, in part because they married on impulse, in part because Dad always claimed that Mom would lose it quickly anyway, so why bother to get a nice one?

When Dad actually lost his ring after a surgery, he was so ashamed that he almost didn't go home that night. He went to Joe's, a place he almost never visited, except when he went on a double-date with Mom when Mer first started dating the vet (whom I always thought of as a martyr). Mom said when McDreamy called her from Joe's, she thought Dad was shot again.

What would a woman normally do when her husband lose his wedding ring? If you thought my mom was like any average woman, you're quite wrong.

"_Are you sure you didn't accidentally leave it in the patient's body?"_ was the first question she asked. Think like a surgeon—that's what Dad taught her, and she was obviously more concerned about malpractice lawsuits than that tiny piece of gold.

Guess what, that was the end of the ring-wearing practice for the Burkes.

The first time I learned about weddings at kindergarten, I asked my parents why they never wore a ring. _"Which woman wouldn't want a ring, a symbol that you're taken and cherished? But it's just a symbol. Our love is real and we don't need a symbol to remind us that." _

Of course, Mom never made it explicit how liberating it was not having to worry about slipping the ring on and off everyday. She was, after all, a somewhat careless woman.


	7. Chapter 7

Ch. 7 When two are not one

My girl friends often wonder why they never see Joshua and I in huge fights. That's the special feature about marriage, or relationship between two people—what you present to others is only part of the truth. Of course we do fight over little things. We just don't go out and tell the whole world about it.

What is actually scary is when everything seems to be smooth and perfect, because you can't help but wonder when it'll go wrong. Take my parents. You may have realized by now that they're two similar yet different individuals. Yet, they hardly argued—at least that's what I saw as a child. No big fights, always calm and polite. In essence, they're too busy to fight because of their schedule and because of me. I knew they wanted to set a good example.

In many little ways, I knew Mommy and Daddy were very much in love. They told me separately. When Mommy took me to the kindergarten, her eyes always glowed when people asked about her husband. Daddy also loved calling her "my beautiful woman" in front of me. But even as a child, I thought something was wrong. We're too quiet. I was a self-conscious kid. I knew I was always the one who said a lot, just to fill the void. Silence was an enemy to many kids.

Then came the winter when I was turning 4, after my grandparents showed up during Thanksgiving. Things got slightly better for a while. I knew my parents were trying.

But once my grandparents left, things were strangely quiet again. My parents had a happy ending eventually, but during those few weeks, nobody thought anything would work out. Mom blamed it on Dr. Webber, but I think the idea had been deeply rooted in Dad's head for a long time. Africa, I mean.


	8. Chapter 8

Ch. 8 Fitting in

My twins are barely half a year old, but already Joshua and I am frantically searching for the best kindergarten for them. As parents, you always want the best for your children. Perhaps that's why I became the center of argument when my father decided to volunteer at a teaching hospital in Rwanda.

So, you might be wondering, was my father's family from Rwanda? Not at all. In fact, his desire to contribute to the poorer nation in Africa was purely humanitarian in nature. The pleasant experience of Dr. Webber motivated him to explore the option, but I am sure he would have said yes if people in Asia or Eastern Europe were asking for help.

The problem? I was four and ought to be in school. My father argued that although it was still slowly rebuilding after the genocide and internal turmoil that happened 2 decades ago, there were schools in Rwanda.

What he did not seem to understand was things bothering my mother. It wasn't about clean water, safe shelter, or schools per se. It wasn't even about giving up her job and surgeries for a while just so she could follow him everywhere--no matter how independent and strong she has always been, when a woman is married and in love, she would make it her priority to follow her spouse and help him achieve his dream as much as she can.

Fitting in. That, was the real problem. All through childhood, my mother was trying hard to fit in. It wasn't easy being one of the very few non-Jewish looking girls attending a prestigious Jewish school. It was even harder when she was forced to dress like a "lady" and talked like one with her "friends".

Whatever treatment she got from my grandmother, she tried to spare me from. Imagine taking your child to a completely foreign land, knowing very well that she would be singled out just by the color of her skin. No wonder she stopped talking to my dad for a week.

I did not have fond memories of that particular week. I think I actually told my friend Lily that I'd rather be eaten up by a buffalo in Rwanda than see my parents becoming estranged. Of course, I later found out that buffalo didn't like eating little girls, and my parents also came up with the best possible solution—I would be home-schooled by my mom while we're in Rwanda. As stern a teacher as she was with her medical interns, my mother actually turned our stay in Africa into the most fascinating experience in my childhood.


End file.
